The latest edition of the Vanguard Producer's Letter will strike joy into the hearts of fans of the game as it deals mostly with the transition from a subscription title to a hybrid subscription-F2P title. The letter comes complete with a handy membership matrix and an FAQ.

Over the next several weeks, we expect to begin rolling out a number of improvements throughout the game, in preparation for our free-to-play launch. And, as I mentioned earlier, we’ll need your help testing these changes in order to refine and finalize our improvements so expect to see many of our developers recruiting your help in the Vanguard forums soon!

Lastly, I want to answer the question I’m sure is at the top of your lists – the release date. We are planning our free-to-play transition this summer and as much as we’d love to share a specific date with all of you, we want to make sure we take the appropriate time to test and do this right so that way we’re ultimately delivering the best possible experience to our players. As I mentioned in my last Producer letter, we assembled our team with only the most passionate Vanguard developers. Therefore, you can rest assured that they’ve fought tooth and nail to acquire as much polish time as possible! ?

Read the full producer's letter on the Vanguard site.

Joy? Lol!!!

By far the worse of $oe free to login offerings. No global chat,restricted to "common" gear,15 quests max,2 bags,25 bank slots,1p max,etc.

You wont even be able to level crafting or diplo with green only gear, and you will need to be carried to level adventuring.

Most fans will be pretty pissed off with this 'trial' model. Forced subscription means nothings changed.

Common gear = bad idea.

So close to being acceptable otherwise. Shame.

Severely limiting access to races, classes, gear, gold and customer support is TOTALLY going to get free people to pay the monthly fee that they refused to pay for the past 5 years.

Yet another failed attempt at a free to play conversion.

Why do these publishers think that a severely limited extended free trial with an optional $15 monthly fee is going to save a failed MMO with a $15 monthly fee?

and to think i was looking forward to this. Shame.

its not really much different to what they implemented in EQ2 and to be honest that is a little pointless unless all you want to do is run basic quests and a little crafting.

was looking forward to the F2P model to see if i like it but seeing as it so limiting i doubt i will bother.

Saw F2P, got excited.

Saw their matrix, no more excitement.

What a stupid decision.  They are trying to lure players in and then as soon as they realize they can't even equip QUEST REWARDS they will never both with this trash set up again.  Do like LoTRO and DDO does, and offer decent items in a cash shop.

Wait, look who I'm talking about.  It's SOE.  They don't care about their customers, just the customer's wallets.

I would happily pay for this game if they fix that horrible lagging you get for a few seconds every time you are entering different "zones"/areas, may seem like a small deal but after a while Im annoyed and it kills the game for me.

I see no other Sub-based MMO that are interesting in the near horizon so I might as well go back to Vanguard.

SOE is horrible.

They shouldnt be allowed to deem their games as F2P... trials are less restricted

Funny to see how $O€ tries to revive a dead game with the worse Premiun system ever. Not that I'm surprised that $O€ comes up with a shitty plan like this though...

One question though... Free players have no housing, but what about boats..?

Sad time for VG is coming. I think this will give it some interest, perhaps even doubling playerbase and get 300 players during peak hours? *LOL* Most certainly the current subscribers will preobably quit and the new player will quit within the month when they find out how limited this matrix is...

RIP Vanguard

Idiot companies like SOE should learn from NCSoft

They know how to do a F2P model

there are TWO really superb models for free/mium or ftp games (turbine's and L2) why must sony try to weasel even more out of people.

they should take notice that turbine is making money off LOTRO hand over fist, and that's in spite of many thousands of people not paying a dime since launch (when they bought lifetime accounts).

Originally posted by Reizla

Funny to see how $O€ tries to revive a dead game with the worse Premiun system ever. Not that I'm surprised that $O€ comes up with a shitty plan like this though...

One question though... Free players have no housing, but what about boats..?

Sad time for VG is coming. I think this will give it some interest, perhaps even doubling playerbase and get 300 players during peak hours? *LOL* Most certainly the current subscribers will preobably quit and the new player will quit within the month when they find out how limited this matrix is...

RIP Vanguard

 

What a way to go!  Would you say that SOE is trying to drive the final nail in the coffin?  They are doing an unprecedented move by attracting new players to the game, giving them nothing and expecting them to subscribe, annoying the subscribers.  Then the subscribers quit.  Since the F2P matrix is a joke, the free players quit.  Dead game.  SOE has succeeded.  Flawless victory.

(Semi) Joking.

Not impressed with this at all. THey are going to try and nickel dime players instead of making them feel like anything they buy is an additive to what they have. DCUO is the best example of what you get for free and what you can buy making the players not feeling left out wwithout having paid nothing.

Originally posted by jessie360
 They are trying to lure players in and then as soon as they realize they can't even equip QUEST REWARDS they will never both with this trash set up again.  Do like LoTRO and DDO does, and offer decent items in a cash shop.

there are still unknowns

reading the soe forums,  http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=57638

on test server,  newbie quest rewards that used to be yellow gear have been changed to green (common) gear -- that may have happened for other quest gear too

also unknown are cash shop unlockers

SOE has always stunk for communication and should have given more information about unlockers and quest gear changes on test server

the final matrix SOE makes available will probably have more unlockers than just Race/Class/Broker access

Originally posted by Preacher26

SOE is horrible.

They shouldnt be allowed to deem their games as F2P... trials are less restricted

Yeah, I know... I tried out the EQ2X version of EQ2 and it was not that good in comparison to the "real game". I am not surprised what they are doing with VG to be honest, but they are even more limiting with VG than they were with EQ2X.

Sigh...

Complete fail on their F2P model, which is really just a very limited free trial. Aion/L2 is the model they should have followed or just offer a one time B2P like Guild Wars. I'm not going to bother with this at all even though I was really looking forward to exploring the game. What a shame.